"Hold onto nothing."

Loss is self-induced suffering. It is a feeling of not getting what you want, like a childish temper tantrum. It's produced by the demand that things should be the way you want them to be, at the same time as them NOT being that way.

There is a sense of space and time, a gap, a separation, between what you seem to want, and what is. This gap is produced by two anchors. One anchor is the thing which is already gone, has left, has died, doesn't exist, is now in the past. The other anchor is your WANTING that thing to be not gone, to be still here in the present with you.

The stronger you want something to be a certain way, and the greater the contrast between that and how things actually are, the more you will suffer and feel despair, a feeling that something you really want strongly has been taken away or denied to you. But this is because YOU are denying how things are now, and so experience as though you are being denied something. If you deny, you will be denied due to the golden rule.

Wanting is actually denial, in which you are denying that things are the way they are, instead of accepting the facts. It is an unwillingness to accept the "reality" of what has changed. If something or someone has left, they have left. This is a fact. But if you want it to not be this way, you are in denial.

This denial produces lack, which produces neediness, which produces desire and wanting. If you are wanting, it means you do not have something - wanting=lacking, as in "you are left wanting." But wanting masquerades as an attraction or desire to have something, which the ego uses as a substitute for love. Wanting is part of specialness, and wanting is a way of saying "I do not want this."

When something leaves, it has left. It is in the past. It is not here. This is a fact. You should allow it to be free to be gone. But if you cannot accept and allow this fact, you will resist it. This resistance is like insisting that it shouldn't be this way, it's not right, it's not fair, you don't "want" it, because you want things to carry on as they were.

This insistence that worldly things NOT change, is in direct contradiction to the nature of all things in this world - which is that they AWAYS change, and sooner or later they "die" (change). It is their nature to change because they are illusions, and illusions are always temporary, with beginnings and endings alike.

Trying to make changing things NOT change, is an attempt to control "reality" and deny what has changed, because you "want it thus." It also means you are trying to give permanence to something that is not permanent, such as body or home or whatever.

"Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums, in which you literally scream, 'I want it THUS!'"

When things have changed, and you have not accepted that they have changed, you are denying the change. You do this to try to suggest that - if you hold on, if you resist, if you don't want the change, if you keep wanting things strongly to be the way they were, then you'll actually stop the thing from going away, you'll stop it from leaving, you'll stop the loss. This is like a desperate pleading that something doesn't leave when it's already left.

When this involves the seeming loss of a person - really just a change in the status of the body - you can resist and deny that they've gone, because you believe that by doing so you'll prevent their death. You try to keep them around by holding onto them, attaching to them, wanting them. And it seems counter to your desires to have to question whether you should even "want them" anymore, as if that would mean itself the loss of what you want.

The thing is, that the stronger you deny what has changed, the more you go into denial, the more you will feel that you are being denied something. It could take the form of you being in a different country with an inability to travel to see your family at christmas for example, and just because you are denied access, it creates a sense of a rift or gap or spacetime, a distance of separateness, which induces horrible feelings of despair - which we call loss or grief.

The intensity of the loss is really in proportion to how much you are denying and holding onto something which is not there. The more you want to keep it and not let it go, the more you feel awful when faced with the fact that it has already gone. And indeed the desire to keep it around is a way to NOT SEE that it has already gone, because you do not WANT that to be true. You want the person to still be around etc.

So there becomes this mismatch between... what is in front of your face as the "reality" or configuration of the illusory world right now, and what you PREFER that it be. If you prefer that your dead partner or family member be still in a body, and they are not, that is a contrast between what is and what is not. That contrast is a separation of spacetime, which turns into a pit of hell and despair.

Jesus in the course is leading us to learn to let everything go. To hold onto nothing. That means letting everything that is in the past be in the past. It means not WANTING to control whether something seems present or not. It means not DENYING what is happening now.

Ultimately there is a plot twist here, in that the use of denial to deny that something has gone, which places focus on something that is past and amplifies the sense of its absence while simultaneously focusing on it, takes you away from the PRESENT. And so the denial of death for example becomes a way to choose it and thus to avoid life. Being in a state of despairing loss is a way to not live in the present moment, and instead to focus on what is NOT present.

Eventually we have to get to a place where we are so detached from whatever seems to come and go, recognizing that all illusory things like bodies and places are indeed just transient fleeting things, in no way deceived into the idea that they can be permanent or last forever. When you are a "under no illusion" that temporary things are temporary, then you become able to accept the illusion's transient nature, and can ALLOW it to be the way it is.

Essentially the antidote to loss and grief is then is to learn recognize the that you are in denial and cannot allow things to be the way they are, you have to stop wanting something that you cannot have, let go of the thing so that it CAN go, allow it to move away from you, accept that it is gone and not present, give it freedom and set it free so that it can come and go without your controlling it (conditional love), and therefore reach a point of acceptance and freedom.

When you can GIVE freedom to the thing that has gone away, you can RECEIVE freedom for yourself that enables you to "move on." If you do not let the thing itself "move on" ie into the past, away from you, then you will not be able to move on either. If you deny the thing its nature of change and temporariness, you will feel denied by the way that the illusory world keeps changing in ways that you do not want. But as you come to allow the thing to go, you will allow yourself to live and be set free. And as you can accept that the thing HAS gone, you can set yourself free by accepting where you ARE in the present. Life and living is always in the present, not the past.

Essentially it all boils down to something very simple. Let all illusory things leave when they leave, live in the present, and stop trying to "stop change" from happening. Find away to accept the circumstance that you "do not want" rather than fighting against it and "wishing" it were different. This is a kind of "sobering up".

Do not BECOME attached, which will only set you up for loss when you find you have difficulty allowing the cord to be severed when the thing leaves. Non-attachment doesn't mean no life or relationship it just means not being confused about whether illusory things are permanent or temporary. People are not bodies. Places are not your real home - which is in God. Everyone in spirit are always joined to each other forever.

Accept that all temporary things are temporary, let them all come and go, and you will enter into acceptance. This is simply a willingness to accept the FACT of what has changed. In acceptance you will be in the present, because you have let all past things stay in the past instead of trying to drag them into the present as baggage. This acceptance opens the way to the acceptance of that which IS permanent, as changeless reality, in which nothing real is ever lost, no-one created ever dies, and there is no possibility of despair.

We are all a part of each other in God. You are the person you think you lost. Everyone is you. There is no death and no separation. Everyone is everyone forever.

"Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

I used to be of the mindset, like most humans, that certain physical things were bad things, and others were good. I would use whatever form the thing took, to tell me what it meant.

Someone falling over and breaking a leg might be considered a bad thing, and someone laughing perhaps a good thing. Tigers are dangerous, butterflies are harmless. You can eat the good bread but don't eat the mouldy bread.

The sense of whether it's right or wrong was always based on what did the thing look like physically, what shape, what color, what behaviours, what forms. As though some physical things are evil, and other physical things are good.

And of course this elevated some physical things to being somehow more spiritual, acceptable, less guilt-laden than others. And other things to being more evil and bad, forms of sin and deserving of guilt. Crimes versus blessings.

But the truth is that looking at and dividing up the world this way, is based on an egoic false perception. The world is in fact not comprised of positives and negatives. It's a neutral world. It's chaotic yes, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciless, sometimes seems to take on an appearance of loveliness etc. But overall it's basically all the same.

Internally, in our minds, our degree of ego - mental illness - determines what we make of the world. Whether we judge some things are hellish, or some things as heavenly. Whether we think that certain acts are crimes while others are not. How much guilt we think something deserves versus how much special attention.

There is a whole internal landscape of meanings and interpretations, judgements and labels, categorisations and evaluations, which become projected onto the world. But they really have nothing to do with the world.

For example we could say that when bodies seem to die, that's very bad, especially if we are projecting the belief that people are entirely physical bodies. The bodies go and then there is loss and horror and crying and misery. But this is because the ego mind is deciding that such events mean this, based on the form that it takes. As though physical deaths are worse than mild headaches or a slight tiredness.

We're got all this meaning that we've put onto everything, binding it to it, and then believing that it is part of it. But the world doesn't inherently have any of this meaning. Physical deaths are not really that important, or any more significant, than someone going to the toilet or eating some cake. It's just another form of the same illusion.

Eventually we end up with an entire hierarchy of illusions in our minds, with things ranked and evaluated as being better and worse in varying degrees, more or less serious, more or less important, more or less harmful, more or less evil etc. But this is entirely all made up.

For sure, our internal egoic experience of the world is an entire layer of suffering induced by ourselves, which really has no actual connection to what goes on physically. We could be watching the very same scene, and either practically kill ourselves over the seeming horror of the form it takes, or laugh at it as another example of nothingness.

It's in this way that the course says "Earth can reflect heaven or hell." Earth itself is neutral, meaningless, and nothing. Just a dream of a world, a pretend world, a world of forms and changes. It has what seem to be some changes we might classify as positive in some way, and others that are not so great. And overall it's a pretty harsh and occasionally pleasant-seeming place.

But whether or not we choose to experience it in a hell-like manner, or a heaven-like manner, is entirely an internal thing. Whether we are coming from ego and mental illness, or coming from Holy Spirit and sanity, makes the entire contribution to whether or not we "read into" the world meaning one thing or another.

All physical forms are illusions, and the differences they take on is itself the illusion that ... being different makes something inherently not the same as something else. A different shape, color, size, style, movement, whatever, all seeming to suggest this is not part of that, there is a separation. Dogs are not cats and houses are not cars and boats are not airplanes and birds are not fish. That's the illusion, that there are many separate things, when in truth it's all one illusion morphing and changing in irrelevant ways.

A dead body, a living body, a broken body, a sick body, a healthy body, it's all still the same illusion. None of those states are better or worse than the others. Symbolically maybe, we'd prefer to see symbols of life and heath and harmlessness. And we'd prefer to not see symbols of death and destruction and murder. But ultimately it's all just spacetime dream-stuff moulded into different shapes.

So really there's no sort of inherent physical sin, or physical evil, or physical good. It's neutral and meaningless in and of itself. It's just stuff. Stuff designed to obscure the wholeness and shared nature of God, to make it seem like God is not fully anywhere and doesn't exist. What you make to it, use it for, see in it, or project onto it, is an entirely mental exercise.

Use it for ego and the ego will happily tell you you're suffering in hell and life is shit and everyone hates you and you might as well be dead. Use it for Holy Spirit and he'll happily tell you you're not of this world, you're safe in God, nothing in the world can affect you, and none of it really matters.

So is a dead body worse than a living one? Does it actually matter is there are crimes or well behaved individuals? Is it worse to murder than to support? Technically no. That doesn't mean it's justified or the kind of behaviour that would emerge from a loving mind. But in the grand scheme of things, life and death, seeming positives and negatives, truths and untruths, it's all the same stuff just in a different shape. And none of it is real.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

While we have an ego, we are not seeing reality directly. Instead, we lose track of the context or perspective of the whole, and enter into a kind of fictional private world. It becomes a private "version" of a world, which is not populated by real figures but by imaginary ones. These figures are "shadow figures" which a person then interacts with as if they are the whole of what is there. But these characters are made up of reactions and judgements and projected ego images.

This is the case for someone in a state of insanity, which means pretty much everyone. Anyone who believes in separation and has separated themselves off from reality, is in a private kind of world. It becomes a subjective world, a world of interpretation and judgement and fantasy. In this world they alone imagine personalized versions of everyone, which barricade them in and hide the reality of the person.

They interact with these images as if they are the actual people. They do not see the actual people, only their interpretations of them. Even if another actual person is right in front of them, they do not see them and instead have a special relationship with a fantasy that is not even there. They are lost in a dream, insanely relating to hallucinated entities as if they really exist, and only they can see them.

Everyone with an ego is doing this. We're all having privatized worlds in which we are in relationships with fantasy characters that we've made up to take over from our actual brothers. We don't see people for how they really are. We have made up an ego for them instead to take the place of them, and the ego we've made for them is in a special relationship with our "own" ego.

Inside this personal world it's as though the person doesn't even really see reality, or hear what's really happening. They see and hear what they project and perceive, and cannot see beyond it. They populate their world with figures from the past and illusions of people and interpretations of judgements laid upon them. They think that these things stand-in for the actual people and are all that exist. And now they are blind to reality and lost in a dream-world, imagining that illusions are real.

"The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL illusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them.

Each one peoples his world with figures from his INDIVIDUAL past, and it is because of this that private worlds DO differ. But the figures that he sees were NEVER real, for they are made up ONLY of his REACTIONS to his brothers, and do NOT include their reactions to HIM. Therefore he does not see that he made them, and that they ARE NOT WHOLE. For these figures HAVE NO WITNESSES, being perceived in one SEPARATE mind only.

It is THROUGH these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they SEE only those who remind them of these images, and it is to THEM that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who ARE NOT THERE, and it is THEY who answer them. And no-one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he ALONE believes they answered him. Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E1

"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES. They do not wish to die, YET THEY WILL NOT LET CONDEMNATION GO. And so they SEPARATE into their private world, where everything is disordered, and where what is within, appears to be without. Yet what IS within they do NOT see, for the REALITY of their brothers they CANNOT see." UrT12E4

"Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE." UrT12E5 "You who know not what you do, CAN learn what insanity IS, and look beyond it. It is GIVEN you to learn how to DENY insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace." UrT12E7

"Yet in the darkness, in the private world of sleep, you SEE in dreams, although your eyes are closed. And it is here that WHAT you see YOU MADE. But let the DARKNESS go, and ALL you made YOU WILL NO LONGER SEE, for sight of IT depends upon DENYING vision." UrT12E9

"Yet this is what denial DOES, for BY it you ACCEPT insanity, believing you can make a private world, AND RULE YOUR OWN PERCEPTION. But FOR this, light MUST be excluded. Dreams disappear when light has come, AND YOU CAN SEE." UrT12E9

"If I have no private thoughts, I cannot see a private world." UrW54L3 "I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing." UrW52L5

"Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts. Despite your initial resistance to this idea, you will yet understand that it must be true if salvation is possible at all." UrW19L2

"To the ego, THE MIND IS PRIVATE, and only the body CAN be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they draw the BODY of another closer or farther." UrT15H8

"For you think that your minds must be kept PRIVATE, or you will LOSE them. And, if your BODIES are together, your minds remain your own." UrT15H11 "How can you do this when you would prefer to have PRIVATE thoughts, AND KEEP THEM? The ONLY way you COULD do this, is to DENY the perfect communication that makes the holy instant WHAT IT IS." UrT15E7

"Let not your fear of sin protect it from correction, for the attraction of guilt is ONLY fear. Here is the ONE emotion that YOU made, WHATEVER it may seem to be. And it IS the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts, AND OF THE BODY." UrT22B5

"If you are joined, how COULD it be that you have private thoughts?" UrT21G3 "Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity." UrT18G3

Trying to wake up from the ego while still having the ego is PAINFUL. We have identified ourselves AS the very ego that we're apparently trying to undo. And even as we take some small steps to undo it, we still retain much of it, and that means all the things we did 'to' it (as it perceives it), we will experience as being done to ourselves. That means we will take all of our attempts to wake up as slaps in the face, like being punched by the truth and attacked by the Holy Spirit.

I remember early on when working with the course especially, the feeling that the Course completely 'ignored' the existence of my ego self, and it sure as hell took that as a kind of huge slap in the face, like being ignored and unacknowledged. That produced suffering.

I also know that early on my understanding of course concepts was too ... unrefined, and full of holes, and too broad, so when I would apply some concepts I would grossly overshoot the mark and come to all kinds of conclusions which was not in alignment with the course. Those false conclusions and implications produced suffering. In particular I remember feeling like we had to 'give up' all of the things we have previously become interested in, like new-age stuff, a love of crystals, healing, various books etc, because - you know, if the world is not real then doesn't that mean we're not supposed to do any of this stuff? And so there was a lot of needless sacrifice, because we did not understand accurately enough.

It's kind of like we are attached to (identified with) this big lump of darkness and we're trying to rid ourselves of it, but at the same time, because we are doing basically both things at once - keeping it and tryin to remove it - we can't help but be in CONFLICT. Some people refer to it as "having feet in two canoes". One canoe seems to pull us one way, the other pulls us another. We want to wake up, but we sure as fuck don't. We want more truth, but we sure as fuck don't. We want to keep doing the Course, but we sure as fuck wish we would just stop the fucking thing. It's always like two steps forward, one step back, and we kind of can't help it.

If we could fully step out of the ego and stay out of it, we wouldn't have this problem. But the problem is we are very attached to it and still believe a lot of what it says. Push me, pull you. We yearn for truth in one direction, then the 'rest of us' pulls us in the other direction.

The ego interprets the truth as an attack. The ego sees the Holy Spirit as an enemy. It absolutely does not want to wake up, and the part of us aligned with it does not want to either. I mean, that's just honestly the case with most of us. We want it, but we don't. And every time we are exposed to some truth, part of us is like - oooo, ahhhh, I love this, I feel so light and happy, and then the other part of us which is holding on to ego is like. .. What the fuck are you doing man, that's totally bullshit, it's offensive, it's hurtful, there is no way you can accept that, you should get away from it.

This is the entire foundation for the 'ego rebound'. It is not just a simple backlash or retaliation. It is the parts of YOU that do not yet want to let go of the ego, even though there seem to be parts of you that do. It's the part of you that still believes you are a body. It's the part of you that truly believes that the ego is telling the truth and is your friend and savior. People DEFEND who they believe is their true savior with great vigor. The viciousness of the ego is entirely justified given how much it believes God is NOT the truth.

So as we take these steps toward awakening, we will continually experience that it is NOT what we want, and that exposing ourselves to light is literally killing us. And everything in us that believes the truth is NOT true, and that God is evil, and that Holy Spirit will destroy us (which can be a huge thing), will kick and scream and resist and run away and try to hide. It does this by RESISTING THE TRUTH. It is a resistance against awakening, but the ego sees it as a resistance against annihilation. To it, it is just self-preservation. It sees its motive as PROTECTION. It thinks it is completely justified and that stupid Holy Spirit should shut the hell up.

This resistance produces defenses, and its main defense is to try to make you even less awake by forcing extra unconsciousness onto you. It wants to dumb you down and numb you to the truth and pull you back into hell. It figures you are SAFER there. So the ego literally applies a kind of 'arrest' on the mind, a restraint, a contraction, a limitation, a blockage, as if you are literally trying to 'get away from' the truth and to withdraw from it into the body. These 'defenses' are what WE call 'sickness'. They are barricades against the truth. We think we NEED them because they are protecting us. We are just scared and confused and think that they serve us and that if we didn't have them, we'd be in danger. So there is no need to think of yourself as guilty for having sickness, it just means that you are confused about what the truth is and you currently are perceiving it as something you don't want. You could ONLY experience it as something you don't want if you are mistaken - ie still believing the ego's interpretation.

As the course says (quoted in earlier post) all sickness is the result of resisting awakening. We want to wake up, but we don't. And if we push ourselves to try to be awake too fast, i.e. before we are truly ready and willing (i.e. we can see clearly enough), we will dig in our heels and try to stop it from happening. That just means we need to take a break and go slower. It's ok to do so.

But the fact remains, trying to wake up is a minefield. We do not understand what it means, we resist it naturally, we think we need protection from it, we attack ourselves to defend ourselves from it, and we come to all kinds of misunderstandings which inflict pain and suffering in our lives. Waking up is therefore not exactly EASY, because we keep ping-ponging all over the place trying to settle on what the truth really is. It's a struggle. It's upsetting. It's painful. And we are bound to make a LOT of mistakes. But we will get there eventually.

While you are believing that your ego is your real self, and as you attempt to do something about this to wake up spiritually, you're going to be pulling that ego self along for the ride.

It does not want to come along for the ride and can't. Its way of perceiving, which you have made your own, must see the approach towards truth and God as dangerous. Your attempt to expose your "self" to the truth will be seen as an attack, and is highly offensive.

This is why every time you (ie your ego-aligned self) tries to allow some light in or tries to become more spiritual, you inevitably find this strong voice emerges in you which retaliates. You have this big ego rebound where you feel all hurt and afraid and abused, as though someone just told you that you don't exist and aren't worth anything.

Your alignment with the ego while simultaneously trying to wake up from it, makes you try to wake up WITH it, and thus to wake IT up. But it cannot awaken. It is purely a device for separation and is illusory. It doesn't have a life of its own without your support.

When you try to pull it towards the truth or transform it, which produces the "spiritualized ego", you might well create an illusion or persona of looking and acting "like" someone who would be spiritual. But deep down you will have this part of you that deeply mistrusts and is threatened by what you are trying to do. Like a hurt child, that part of you will attack the part of you that's trying to pull it into the light.

Over time I've seen how personally I attempted to become more spiritual, for example by writing things which seemed as spiritual as possible. And it produced a lot of backlash for the "rest" of me that was still identified with the ego and didn't want to wake up.

When I was writing my first book, I really believed that I was opening up to light and truth and it was powerful and healing, BUT at the same time it was very painful. I felt like I was flogging myself to death, or sacrificing, or attempting to push myself to the brink of tolerance. I had a lot of ego rebounds.

Partly I felt that I was approaching truth more but there was a big chunk of me that was still holding on tightly to the false idea that I was the ego, and was trying to change "it" into something more spiritual. It could not change and did not want to and saw my attempts as deeply hurtful. And so because I was aligned with that, I experienced deep hurt along with it. I kept trying to be more spiritual in my persona.

While you're "seeking" for spiritual truth this is pretty much a given that this is going to be your experience. So long as you believe you are the ego self, that part of you is not going to like or want or believe in or see sense in the truth. It is going to be threatened by it, offended by it, hurt by it, it's going to take it to mean things it doesn't really mean, and because the truth proves that the ego does not exist, your alignment with ego is going to imply you do not exist. And that's just going to scare the shit out of you.

Gradually over time, making all of these mistakes, yearning to be closer to God, willing to push my "self" (idea of self) towards the truth, and going through endless rebounds, I think I've gradually lessened the belief I have in the ego.

Letting the ego GO is really the only way to become "more spiritual". It's not through changing it at all. It's not through making it more spiritual. The only way to be free is to be free of IT, which means your sense of who you are, your identity, your definition of self, MUST shift from ego to your Higher Self, or Holy Spirit (right mind etc).

The ego can't shift there with you. If you try to take your ego self there and pretend that you're doing it, you will just enact the ego's bungie cord. Like an elastic band it will just pull "you" right back to its territory, and the more you are trying to pull it away from its territory the stronger the rebound is going to be.

This is exactly what produces reincarnation - the attempt to get out of the world without really letting it go, elasticly brings you right back into it because you still belive you are made of it. Exposing ego to too much light will burn it, and with you believing it is yourself YOU will experience that suffering, and you will flee from the light right back into the body.

Gradually, we have to let the ego identity go and awaken FROM it to realize that it is not who or what we are. Everything it perceives is not our real perception. Everything it believes about itself cannot be what we believe about ourselves. Everything it trusts in cannot be what we trust. We have placed our faith in it and are attached to it. We have to let go and "surrender" its position to make room for God.

Waking up is painful. If we could see the areas where we believe in the ego and could simply gently relax and let go of them without adding threat to them or making them confused that we're trying to imply things which are not true or real to it, then perhaps we can awaken more gently. But that kind of ability probably only comes from a more awakened self that is able to discern lovingly. In the midst of the ego we rarely have such clarity and compassion and tend to step on our own toes all the time.

Often when I become more aware of truth and want to really "get it quickly", which can also be spurred by the ego because it knows that if you "do a lot of course" you will have such a reaction to it that maybe you'll stop doing it, using it to attack you, I'll just do too much too quickly. I will have deep emotional releases and become overwhelmed. It will also become frightening.

When I started to see that sin was not real and that it could only be my belief that I sinned that is keeping me from God, I went looking for the sin in me to try to undo it all, and that was simply too much at once. I spazzed-out for a few days and it was not at all pleasant. I had to stop and take it slower. Baby steps.

There are also times where I write about the Course a lot and maybe go into overdrive and am writing several times a day, and it all seems so wonderful and truthful and inspiring but then comes the parts of me that are still holding onto lies and they fly up into my awareness like a slap in the face. How DARE you claim that that's true! How COULD you believe that! Stop it!

By all means take a big leap if you are genuinely ready and can do so without the huge ego backlash, but otherwise, take your time and be gentle on yourself. Take a break.

The ego loves to tell you that when such-and-such happens, you MUST have a reaction.

It acts like it's a given. This is because it believes that a 'cause' outside of you has the power to affect you. This so-called cause DEMANDS that you be affected by it.

This is also to do with the hierarchy of illusions, which means that apparently different severities of problems seem to demand different kinds of reactions.

The ego had this set up so that, for example, when you blow your nose you don't have a significant reaction, but when someone tells you you have a disease, you freak out. Or when someone stubs their toe you have a slight response but when they fall on their face and hurt themselves you have a much bigger response.

We've become conditioned by what seems to be 'called for' in different situations, largely based on how things *appear* physically, causing us to develop a conditional response. Situation A calls for response A. Situation B calls for response B. This way we have learned to be conditional and to be reactive and affected by what happens.

We need to BREAK this connection between external causes and given levels of reaction, if we are to become unconditional.

I was talking to Jesus last night and was imagining this scenario where a person might die and how I would feel, and already just with the imagining of it I noticed I felt upset, and Jesus stopped me. I looked at it and realized, I am actually giving energy to this idea and I'm the one who is imagining it. So really, it's nothing to do with the situation happening, I am literally doing it to myself right now. So I stopped, I stopped buying into my own prediction, and laughed.

What this showed me is that we do not HAVE to suffer. Just because something supposedly 'bad' might happen around us, it doesn't HAVE to mean that we have a given reaction. We don't HAVE to have a meltdown. We don't HAVE to completely lose it and become seriously upset.

What we have to learn to see is that it is our own perception that shows us a belief in external causes being real, in being powerless, threatened or victimized. It's our own mind that is CHOOSING to suffer. Suffering is a choice, brought on by a perceptual mistake. We can choose not to have this reaction by choosing not to to see the situation this way.

So this breaks the ego's strangle-hold and the hierarchy of illusions, by breaking the connection between external causes and internal reactions. We do not have to suffer. We do not have to be upset. We do not have to have reactions. We are literally choosing to suffer on our own by how we're using our mind and perception. If something 'bad' happens, if something 'serious' happens, those are judgements by ego, that seem to demand serious reactions. We don't have to play that game. We don't have to lose our peace.

All is choice.

You may not realize it but God has totally unlimited power. "With God all things are possible." This doesn't just mean "all ego things are possible" or "all worldly things are possible." It means literally, there is absolutely nothing you can conceive of that is impossible.

Having become accustomed to being limited by ego laws, we have a tough time with this. When for example there is a tsunami which floods an entire city, you might think, well, this is such a huge tragedy that we cannot possibly undo it.

Think again.

God can.

And so what this gives rise to is, realizing there is no order of difficulty in miracles BECAUSE God can do anything. And that means, in order to tap into that power that's in you, you're going to need to have ego-world-defying FAITH or TRUST in God's capabilities, even as they go way above and beyond what SEEMS to be possible.

So the world might be telling you, we can do nothing about this and cannot reverse it. Jesus says that these are mere appearances and that all appearances can be changed by miracles. That there needs to be not one part of the illusion that we consider capable of healing while another part is not. That even this huge seeming disaster can be completely corrected, because this TOO is possible.

Opening our minds up to these POSSIBILITIES, the freedom from all bondage and all ego laws and certainties and consequences, opens us up to having to put our FAITH in a source of power and freedom far beyond what the world suggests to us. This law-defying power is precisely what MIRACLES are for.

When someone dies and they're laying there, are we to think with the ego that "even this cannot be changed" or are we to think with God that "even this can be changed"?

To not believe the sense of limitation and difficulty and irreversibility of these `problems` IS the willingness to overlook their illusions and disregard them as having no order of difficulty at all. We need to learn that nothing is impossible with God, and to trust that, and to know this above all else, otherwise we simply will stay slave to the consequences of sin.

There is nothing God cannot do through you. There is nothing your holiness cannot do. And if that means raising the dead or completely reversing an entire tsunami, so be it. Moses parted an ocean. That's no small feat. If we simply "accept" worldly situations and bodily conditions and problems at face value as though written in stone and irreversible, we have NO FAITH at all.

Jesus is asking for us to develop not only some faith in God's capabilities, but TOTAL FAITH in Him. That means utterly world-defying, law-breaking, demonstrations that what seems IMPOSSIBLE is perfectly possible. Because to God, all things are possible. We are to put our trust in something that is UNLIMITED in its freedom, rather than putting our trust in the ego's sense of utter limitation and impossibility.

Bodies are incredibly separating. They are like anchors, and little prison cells. One body is over here, the other is over there, separated by a gap of space and time. If you are in and as your body, and if the other person is in and as their body, you are not connected, you have no relationship, and are kept apart.

This separation gap will fester with sin and attack and specialness and selfishness. Identifying that you, who are you and your brother, are only located in and as your separate body, rips you away from them and separates your mind.

Part of your mind is in and as their mind, which you have located as separated off and bound to their body, out of reach to you. Given they are separate, if they so much as flinch in the wrong way, you will take it as an act of war, inflicted by a separate will against your will. Being bodies is an act of war. There can be no undoing of specialness while you believe your brother is anchored to a physical object.

Both of you are supposed to share everything, join entirely, be in psychological union as one, and overlap with each other. Your brother is part of yourself, and ONLY by recognizing and identifying your sense of self WITH them, including them on who and what you are, can you enter into love. Without this joining, love is absent and separation has taken hold, and conflict will not be far behind.

"You" (separate body) "did this to me" (separate body) "and I" (separate body) "did not do this to you" (separate body) "and therefore you are guilty." It is the entire basis of scapegoating and all sense of victimhood. If you are NOT your brother, there are two sides and there is war. You have excluded him by associating him with a body. You do not see him, because his body blocks your vision, a wall of flesh around his mind, locking him into darkness.

Bodies literally are in the way. They are completely opposite to the nature of the mind. They are separation devices. Your whole life you have identified people AS a separate body, not a part of you, kept away from you, responsible for their own acts and not yours, and whose interests are not your own. And every body-identified (egoic) mind sees themselves as separated off and held apart by the body. This is completely unnatural.

No one is a body. Bodies are designed to keep apart what God has put together as one. Your brother is literally you. Your minds are one. Your self is shared. You are both the whole Kingdom. What many people don't realize is that Jesus recognized that he IS EVERYONE, and that is why he united the will of the whole sonship with the father, and why you were with him when he ascended.

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"The sonship is your soul."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"No one can remember God alone."

"In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, MUST be a way to punish sins you think are YOURS in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, NOT your brother, DIFFERENT from you in that he is MORE GUILTY, thus in need of your correction, as the one MORE INNOCENT than he. This splits HIS function off from yours, and gives you both a DIFFERENT role. And so you CANNOT be perceived as one, and with a single function that would MEAN a shared identity with but ONE end."

In ACIM there is a lot of talk about imprisoning someone, and also about setting them free. Jesus actually says that you can either a) amplify the sickness of another by reinforcing beliefs they already have, or b) weaken the sickness of another by withdrawing belief in it.

It is one thing to realize that you can potentially "positively" help someone to heal and to set them free, by not projecting guilt or fear or sin onto them, but it is another to willingly look at the possibility that you may be "cursing" them with your ego.

This doesn't mean necessarily that you originate a person's sickness, or that you can curse them against their will. But Jesus does say that you can reinforce beliefs they already have, exploit their weaknesses, and essentially increase their guilt or sickness by projecting yours onto them. We do "affect" each other.

It however remains true that a person who is strong in the truth becomes invulnerable, and has set themselves free both from imprisonment and from the potential for being imprisoned. It is not possible to drag such a person into the darkness.

But if a person has volunteered to "play along with" the idea that they are guilty, or deserve to suffer, or to not be loved, this is like a kind of invitation. If we just lay down and accept that we should suffer as a result of being guilty, we make ourselves sort of "open to" forms of suffering or attack, allowing or using them to hurt ourselves. If we set up a mechanism of self-hurt, it becomes possible for another person to leverage that.

In essence, Jesus is saying that if someone buys into sin and guilt, the projected sin and guilt of others can compound it. It can make their situation worse, further weakening their mind and health. I've certainly heard stories of people falling sick and having medical issues due to being in proximity to guilty, blameful or fearful individuals. And I can say from personal experience that toxic-energy people have to sometimes be avoided.

If it's true that your mind can influence another mind, which appears to be exactly what Jesus is saying - because minds are joined - then it is possible to either abuse this fact or use it for constructive purposes. When the mind is turned to more constructive uses it can leverage the strength it sees in another to amplify that strength, increasing the light and innocence in another's mind, and therefore inducing healing on their behalf.

We need therefore to be mindful that either we are blessing or cursing, hurting or healing. We can pull up or we can pull down. We can be the light of the world or the darkness of the world. And what we choose to give to another we will experience for ourselves. We cannot escape this law because it's the law of God. What you do unto others, you to do yourself, and vice versa.

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

You cannot define yourself. God created you. You had no say in this because you didn't exist at the time. You came into being by his will alone, and per his design. Whatever you are, is given by him, and cannot be changed.

Some would possibly interpret this as imprisoning, as though grounds for rebellion. As if you want to change yourself but are not allowed. At best, you can deny what you are, as God created you, and pretend to be something you are not . But you can't actually remove what you are deep down.

You are free to do this. You can pretend to be anything you want. You can pretend to have authority over him and to have created yourself. You can redefine your images of what you are till the cows come home. But still you cannot replace what God has created.

This means really that no matter how you define yourself, you will never be wholly satisfied. This is because God has already laid claim to the perfect definition of you. The definition which results in you being at your happiest, most satisfied, most joyful and creative, and most accepting of yourself. To reject a perfect identity is to settle for less.

So if you are in the business of having to be the gatekeeper with an authority problem who wants to tell God what they are, you can go right ahead. But it will not ultimately satisfy you. Nor will it bring you total happiness or creative power or love or joy or peace or meaning. It can't, because there is only one perfection and that's the one God has chosen you to be.

You can own up to accepting a kind of "off the shelf" identity from God, accepting that you are as God created you and have never changed. Or you can deny that and go into a kind of nightmare of confusion about who and what you are, endlessly searching for the self you lost, and trying to replace it with make-believe fiction. But only accepting God's definition of you will truly fulfill you.

You can "try on" all manner of bodies. You can wrap yourself in wardrobes of clothing. You can put on masks and dress up and role play and pretend to be various things. But they ultimately are all empty because they lack the wholeness of God's definition of you. You can't find love and wholeness anywhere else. He has the monopoly on that.

Some rebel against God because they don't like this sense of not being free to deifne who and what they are. They think they have the right to redefine themselves in their own image and likeness, to whatever whim they please. Indeed they ARE free to do this. But that does not mean they can ACTUALLY accomplish it, or that it can make them happy. You can deny your reality, but you cannot extinguish it.

Somewhere deep down you know that only the self that God created you to be is the one you can fully accept and be true to. It's the only definition of you that is sane, and the only one that works. You are part of the functioning of the machinery of heaven. You have been given a function and a role to play, assigned by God's will. If you do not want to fit into that and fulfill that function, then you will rebel and try to invent other functions.

Only the function God gave you can work. Only God's will for you can make you happy. Only God's mind can keep you alive forever. And only accepting yourself as you really are can bring you peace. But you have to want it.